Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Toddler Peer-Pressure And A Birthday Party From The Viewpoint Of A 2-year Old

We went to yet another kid’s birthday party over the weekend, but this time was a little different because my daughter insisted on bringing her Fisher-Price toy camera along. You know, the one Santa gave her for Christmas and was interested in for about a week and then decided it wasn’t worthy of attention anymore because she thought a cheap Happy Meal toy was much more appealing…

Figure 1: Happy Meal Toy(Uh, what is it and what does it do? Oh yeah, make annoying noises...)

Well, I’m not sure what caused this sudden interest of picture taking again but it seemed as if she wanted to take the camera everywhere. To the store, park, pool, bathroom (while I was using it), etc.The wife and I suspect that she saw one of the neighborhood kids or somebody on TV using a camera. It’s strange, if an older kid or character does something – she’ll want to do it too. Except, of course, pooping on the potty.

Her giving into peer-pressure scares me. For instance if Elmo told her to steal my credit card, passport, social security number, kidney, and send them to him she would do it in a heartbeat. By the way, that’s exactly why I sleep with the door locked at night.

Anyhow, she wandered around the party with the camera taking pictures for about an hour or two until she filled the 1,300 picture capacity memory card.

A few birthday pictures with added titles:

" Child with Long Mysterious Shadow"

"Sand detail and its shoes"

"Untitled, with clouds and bars"

"Rocking Horse with No Friend to Share Ice Cream With"

"The Man Imposing His Rules on the Little People"

"The Unknown Climber"

I knew she was done when she walked up to me while I was eating my Jell-O and cake, handed me the camera, and showed me her index finger saying “Look dad-DEE!... Booger.”

We had that same happy meal toy in triplicate. It was highly annoying. We also wondered WTF it was.

My daughter had that same camera, but the pictures weren't nearly as good and it ate batteries and finally shit the bed after 6 months. But we got it when they first came out, so I suspect they improved them since then.

Your timing is great, or maybe it's not yours and it's your daughter's timing. But HA, boogers. Oh, boogers and poop. I'm an easy laugh. However, I am going to ban Elmo (who I can't stand anyway) and keep a close watch on my kidney.

Maybe you should wipe one of your grown up man size boogers on her. I think she would get the point. If that works, maybe you should poop your pants and let her clean it up, then she might get a little more serious about going poop in the potty. I just realized...I am going to be an awesome mom someday!